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@freakshowdeluxe
Save the Drama For Your Mama
Save the Drama For Your Mama
Lookee there at all that learnin’!! (Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com)
When I was in graduate school, working towards my Master’s Degree, one of the required classes was a Stage Management class. Taught by the head of the Theatre Department – who had worked for Cameron Mackintosh (the producer of Les Miserables)for a time. Was a good class. Was a good school! I enjoyed it and have found what I…
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In 2020 It Will Be 20 Years
In 2020 It Will Be 20 Years
Weirdos Freaks Wackos and Creeps Anti-Social Club!
You heard it here first, folks!
In the year 2020, it will be 20 years of your FreakShow Deluxe!!
From the 2001 premiere (inauspicious in every way) with two guys and a handful of stunts entertaining crowds waiting to get into the PsychoPath Haunted Trail at the Caesar’s Ford Amphitheater Park just outside Xenia, Ohio – we did not even have a name…
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Consider This About Performing
This is the latest entry in This Business We Call Show - hope you enjoy. Please follow the blog!
There are some individual thoughts that I have been considering about performing as my profession. None of them are really big enough for their own entry – so I thought I would just list them out for your edification.
I want you to give these individual ideas some thought — and I encourage you to give me your thoughts, and to challenge anything you see off.
These are my thoughts:
A number of…
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How To Inspire Others
I am trapped on a plane heading to Los Angeles today.
I do not like feeling trapped – but, here we are. There are families in the rows both in front of and behind me, that the kids will not stop fighting. I am in the middle seat in my row – and jockeying for the armrest with the guy in the aisle seat, while the woman at the window looks panicked every time I brush into her space. Then a few rows…
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Jumping Back In With Both Feet
"Jumping Back In With Both Feet" is the newest blog entry - read my latest presentation to academia!
Miss Malice Aforethought and Reverend Tommy Gunn perform during the FreakShow Family Show at The Southern Sideshow Hootenanny.
Sorry, everyone, that we had a few weeks there with no entries!
There were some posts (mostly) prepared, BUT with all the running around I have done over the past three weeks… ug! I thought I had it under control, but I was wrong… There was a brief moment that one of the…
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An Essay About Stealing Acts (part 2)
An Essay About Stealing Acts (part 2)
I have had just about enough of this malarkey…
In last week’s blog entry, I closed by saying that proving the theft of a stunt is hard – but the stealing of an act, on the other hand…
That is something else entirely.
But that is not to say that it is just cut and dried in figuring out who stole what from whom and how. My background is in theatre (as opposed to specifically “sideshow”) – and in…
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An Essay About Stealing Acts (part 1)
An Essay About Stealing Acts (part 1)
Not this kind of steel…
There is always a LOT of discussion about stealing acts amongst sideshow folks…
Who appeared on television doing someone else’s act? What act did some performer find themselves accused of stealing? Where did another performer see someone performing a stolen act? When did an allegedly stolen act originate – and how? Why are so many performers stealing other people’s acts?
A…
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No Post Today - Wait Until Next Week
No Post Today – Wait Until Next Week
Things are not working out as I planned…
Sorry – there is a LOT going on as we prepare for the Texas Showdown Festival AND The Southern Sideshow Hootenanny in the coming weeks.
While I usually write my blog entries in advance – a quick re-read of the one scheduled for today convinced me I needed to rework it a bit. It will post at 6:00 a.m. on Monday, March 12, 2018, if I can get it all together…
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Fame Is Fleeting (part 2)
Fame Is Fleeting (part 2)
I told you about the Black Dog in Part 4. Isn’t he adorable?! Sometimes you start thinking it is not so bad to have him around…
So as I talked about in my last post (part 1) and, yeah yeah, I know that it says “Flame Is Fleeting,” partly because I am an idiot… but also I wanted to title it like the featured image…
ANYWAY —
After last week’s post, Travis Fessler from The Pickled Brothers Circushad…
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Flame Is Fleeting (part 1)
Flame Is Fleeting (part 1)
Here is your analogy right here…
FreakShow Deluxe had a very busy Halloween season. VERY busy.
In addition to our regular nightly shows at our residency at the BeetleHouse LA – the Tim Burton themed restaurant on Hollywood Blvd. – we had troupes at Halloween themed amusement parks in both Oklahoma City (at Frontier City) and Seattle (at Wild Waves)for the entire month. It was a lot to coordinate,…
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Fame Is Fleeting (part 1)
Fame Is Fleeting (part 1)
We have just finished a very busy Halloween season. Halloween season is a time with most of the site shows that I know get the opportunity to cross paths as we all maneuver our way around the country. It’s the greatest time of the world because I get to talk to a lot of people I don’t get to see baby but one time at a year. It’s also the worst time, because we all share all the horror stories of…
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Take Care of Yourself (part 4)
Take Care of Yourself (part 4)
This is a picture of me looking better… as you can see, it is not much of an improvement. TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF! Do you want to end up like this?!
So in my ramblings (now in part 4) about Taking Care of Yourself – there are still a couple more things I feel that I need to talk about. If this is your first time to this blog, you can click over here to go back to read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
Th…
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Take Care of Yourself (part 3)
staple holes – lots of them… and some staple marks… and some burns, too. maybe a few darts… typical night on the stage.
So – this is part 3 of Take Care of Yourself. Saw part 1 a couple weeks ago (read it here), and then part 2 last week (read it here). As I mentioned, your Reverend Tommy Gunn has been in recovery from several sinus surgeries – AND on some amazing painkillers– so they have…
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REVIEW: So You Want To Get Into Performing 2018 edition
Happy to be sharing this with you, folks!
THIS blog entry happens to be an in-depth book review of the new Scott Autrey book: So You Want To Get Into Performing (2018 edition). Let us get into it:
BOOK REVIEW: A GREAT BOOK FOR THE BEGINNER!
BOOK: SO YOU WANT TO GET INTO PERFORMING 2018 edition – 142 pages
Buy it online here: http://www.lulu.com/shop/scott-autrey/so-you-want-to-get-into-performing…
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Take Care of Yourself (part 2)
I got this cut during a long run from a sharp knife.
So in my recovery from surgery this last week, I have been spending most of my time doped up on painkillers, propped up in a chair, binge-watching various and sundry television shows and movies on Netflix. THAT has given me some shyte to think about —
The kids love watching Glee, which I (and all of us in the FreakShow Family) have never seen…
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THIS INJURY DID NOT HAPPEN DURING A SHOW! The Green Monster thought it would be a great idea to wrestle with the big dog – and this happened. Thankfully, there was not a gig lined up. BUT – what if we suddenly get a call to do a TV APPEARANCE? Can we really have him show up to throw knives with this big cut on his face? What would people say?! Arg!!
LOOK FOLKS! Your face is the money! You cannot let anything happen to it – even during your off-stage time! IT WILL COST YOU MONEY!!!!!!!!!
Note to go with the picture of the Green Monster (above): THIS INJURY DID NOT HAPPEN DURING A SHOW! The Green Monster thought it would be a great idea to wrestle with the big dog – and this happened. Thankfully, there was not a gig lined up. BUT – what if we suddenly get a call to do a TV APPEARANCE? Can we really have him show up to throw knives with this big cut on his face? What would people say?! Arg!!
ScarFace MacGunn here. This happened during Halloween season – concrete block smashed on me while I was laying on the bed of nails had a piece go awry – despite ALL our safety precautions. It happens, folks…
I realize that every time I say something like, “do not make yourself less attractive by letting yourself be injured in the noggin,” or something similar there are plenty of folks who consider themselves performers saying something along the lines of, “don’t tell me how to live my life, Reverend Tommy Gunn!” To which I say – shut your pie hole!
Shut your pie hole!
Listen (or read… whatever you want to call it).
This blog is not about “art,” as such (I mean… it is… but, you know…), but I know there are plenty of folks in sideshow whose thoughts are along the lines of, “the beauty in sideshow is in being different. being outside the norm.” And, thusly, the huge amounts of tattoos, piercings, and all that kind of thing. The weird hair – weird is relative, though… I just mean when I say that sort of outside the norm of natural hair colors and no shaving/difficult cuts. All that is pretty mainstream these days.
THIS IS WHAT I AM TRYING TO SAY – things like tattoos, piercings, and hair stylings are all choices. It is a choice you make and you go with. What I am talking about in this particular blog entry are accidents and injuries specifically. Some avoidable. Some not.
And what I am saying, too, is that you need to take care of yourself as a performer. Performing is something that you have to be there and on deck to do! If you are sick or injured and cannot do a performance, then guess what? You do not get paid! And you want to get paid, right? And keep getting paid in the future? It is possible that missing a single gig may have no affect on your future – or it might affect everything.
When my primary work was commercials and shyte and once had a call for a leg modeling thing – with good reason, I have nice legs. Hairy in a masculine, but not gross way – nicely muscled, but not too muscly… Anyway, the problem was that I had a motorcycle wreck the previous week, so my legs had plenty of road rash on them (tore right through my jeans… ug!). Obviously, I did not get the gig – and that agent never called me again for anything else! Because I could not do the one event, how could that agent trust me in the future.
While to someone not in the business may see this treatment as unfair – along the lines of, “What?! That was just one time!” consider changing your perspective to look at it from a different viewpoint.
The viewpoint that you only really get once chance to impress someone. Someone who wants to pay you. Even if it is someone you have done something good for before – you are only as good as the last thing you have presented to them.
You are only as good as your last show.
~ classic theatre advice
You can read some (useless, in my opinion) advice about this common trope here – but instead of looking at it negatively, consider the truth in this example: if you are a waiter, the people you are currently serving do not give a shyte about the previous tables you served, the awards you have won, or what you are going through. They only care about your service to them in that moment. And with good reason! It directly affects them. Sure – the restaurant who keeps you working overall is concerned about all your tables and takes all that into consideration, your tip for this table is only concerned with your service to said table.
Waiting tables is very similar to performance. Each performance is judged by the audience watching it. No matter how many accolades a performer has received, the audience judges them on that show they are watching in that moment. It is not unreasonable.
The reality is that a bad performance will earn bad reviews/reactions from that audience; but the overall arc of performance will be what judges that performer in the long run and keeps them in (or gets them out of) the business.
So back to the example of the agent and this botched leg modeling gig – the decision for them to never call me again for anything while maybe short-sighted, is not necessarily unreasonable. They needed me for a gig, and I could not do it – and, more importantly, why could I not do it? BECAUSE I DID NOT TAKE CARE OF MYSELF TO BE READY WHEN THE CALL CAME!!
I am the one who had road rash from a motorcycle wreck when the call came in because of what I did. Sure – you can try to justify it (as I did at the time), that it was not my fault, it was an accident, or whatever. But, the fact is, my J.O.B. as a model was to be sitting around waiting for the call to come, and then to go and DO the job. And I did not. So I never got another opportunity from that agent or company again.
But I did get other opportunities. And when they came along, I was ready.
This is immediately after the sinus surgery.
The day after surgery they removed no less than two (2) blood-soaked tampons from EACH nostril.
THEN they pulled the stints out
I am writing this right now from my recovery from surgery. The pictures immediately above is from the last week. I have been on a LOT of painkillers – which is not something I normally do, so it has had me a bit loopy…
It was a surgery that had to happen to help take care of the constant sinus infections and bronchitis that I have been suffering from – and have been getting worse and worse every year. This year, for example, I have been on antibiotics for nearly 10 months trying to beat down everything that has been going wrong with me. Scans of my head showed significant patches of infection throughout my sinuses.
And these infections have been affecting my livelihood. Constant mucus and phlegm have been hurting my voice – making it hard to see (pushing on my ocular nerves), to hear (the infections get into my ears, too), and to think with my head constantly being stuffed up.
My first thought was, of course, did all this happen because of what I do (jamming all kinds of implements into my skull and nasal passages – among other places). The answer, thankfully, from all the doctors were a resounding “no.”
Not that I should not take better care of myself – throughout the years there have been a variety of injuries, infections, and health issues. But, even when injured, still had to do shows – usually while trying to cover up particularly bad bruises, cuts, and infections. Thousands and thousands of staples have left a myriad of permanent scars – and it sure takes a lot longer to heal after an injury now than it used to. And there was the time(s) shown in the photos below that the doctor thought MRSA.
cut from a sharp knife during cutting board
bruises from darts, staples & needles
this bruise came up from a bat or something, I think…
staple holes – lots of them…
got a deep infection – took a variety of hospital visits to take care of it
This is when the infection was getting “better”
draining the infection – good times. did shows with this going on, too
Miss Malice fell down the stairs getting out of the trailer before a show… THAT was tough to cover up
My second thought after being told I had have this surgery was, “Will I still be able to perform!? Is this surgery going to just limit me from performing? Or will it stop me completely?”
Time will tell.
You may be wondering why we try to cover up injuries we get from the audience. There are a wide variety of performers out there who believe it is not a “real” show unless there is blood and injury – and that bleeding, bruising, and other injuries are what the the people are there to see.
While there are audiences who like that kind of thing – but, in my experience, they are NOT the audiences who really pay out!! Certainly not like the crowds who will pay over and over again to see the performers defy the odds by emerging from the dangerous acts (mostly) unscathed.
And that is what this blog is about – the BUSINESS of show business. I mean – thanks for your opinion that I am “worried about the wrong thing” – but the fact is you are worried about the wrong thing if you are not thinking about your money.
So – I had the surgery. Am in recovery. Not allowed to do much of anything for over two weeks. Could not even lie down the first few days. Came out of the anesthesia fighting to keep from “drowning.” It has been kind of tough. Especially trying to find out if I will still be able to perform once I do recover…
Take Care of Yourself (part 1) LOOK FOLKS! Your face is the money! You cannot let anything happen to it - even during your off-stage time!
The Arts ARE Under Attack
I have been out of pocket a bit – it is because there is a LOT going on. More about that later…
But, yes, the arts are for sure under attack. Look no further than the purchase and restructuring of the LA Weekly! A company called Semenal (who has chosen not to reveal their managers & investors) purchased the quintessential Alternative Arts & Entertainment publication from Voice Media Group and…
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